With the support of $1 million from The Ian Potter Foundation, The University of Melbourne’s Indigenous Eye Health Program led by Professor Hugh Taylor, aims to eradicate trachoma and redress the devastating inequity of Indigenous eye health in Australia.

Since his pioneering days in the 1970s with friend and mentor Professor Fred Hollows, Hugh Taylor has been a passionate advocate for the health and wellbeing of our Indigenous communities. Today he is on a mission to eradicate a disease that has been wiped out in every developed country except Australia. The endemic poor eye health of our Indigenous community impacts greatly on life expectancy and quality of life, education outcomes and employment opportunities.

Poor eye health is a powerful indicator of the difficulties Indigenous communities have in accessing health care. The Ian Potter Foundation is committed to assisting Professor Taylor in his quest and to ensuring that all Australians understand the devastating impact of poor eye health.

Professor Taylor is working tirelessly to spur the Commonwealth Government into action. He believes with concerted action and about $20 million from the government that active trachoma could be eradicated in Australia within three to five years.

The new National Portrait Gallery built in Canberra's Parliamentary Zone opened to the public in December 2008. To further the Gallery's program of acquiring new works for the national collection of portraits the Foundation approved a grant of $1 million in 2007.

One of the great tasks for the National Portrait Gallery is the development of a national collection of portraits. The funds provided by The Ian Potter Foundation have been devoted to this task. The Gallery began collecting as an independent institution in 1998 and, although it has successfully acquired significant gifts of portraits, the area of historical works of the nineteenth century needed to be addressed.

The Gallery’s intention is to apply the grant to the purchase of major nineteenth or twentieth century portraits to provide a comprehensive view of Australian history.

Portraits in the nineteenth century period are rarer than those of our own time and significant works remain in private collections. When such works come onto the market they tend to be expensive. The Foundation's grant funds expended to date have allowed the Gallery to acquire four significant nineteenth century works and one significant early twentieth century double portrait. The grant will allow the Gallery to continue building that part of the collection in the future.

The remote Kimberley region of northwest Australia is one of the world's last remaining great wilderness areas. Rugged, beautiful and isolated, the region may also hold the key to Australia's pre-history, being home to hundreds of thousands of rock art paintings and drawings known as Bradshaw (Gwion Gwion) and Wandjina rock art. These mysterious and beautiful paintings are hidden in outback bush galleries on the huge terracotta rock surfaces and escarpments of the north Kimberley. How we protect, conserve and research the region and its rock art will say much about us as nation.

The Kimberley Foundation Australia (KFA) was established in 1995 to study the past and protect the future of the Kimberley region. Very little is known of Australia's pre-history or of the continent's ancient history prior to European

settlement. The KFA hopes to do something to rectify this omission in Australia's rich past history.

The Ian Potter Foundation's grants enable KFA to fund the Kimberley Region Human and Environmental Program to study the Kimberley’s ancient past. Eminent scientists have accepted KFA’s invitation to guide this study, and have joined the Scientific Advisory Council to shape the Foundation’s long-term research program. Outstanding researchers from all relevant disciplines will be attracted by the opportunity to contribute to unravelling the by-ways of human development in the ancient environments of the Kimberley.

The first stage of Australia's newest and most remarkable botanic garden, the Australian Garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) Cranbourne, opened in 2006. The fundamental aim of the Australian Garden which features the dramatic Red Sand Garden, spectacular Rockpool Waterway, the Eucalypt Walk, Dry River Bed and Arid Garden is to reveal and celebrate the beauty and diversity of Australian plants. It also has the more practical aim of encouraging the cultivation of native plants in home gardens.

The garden is designed around the concept of the presence and absence of water in the Australian landscape and visitors will make discoveries about the use and conservation of water, about low water use plants suitable for their own gardens and about the practice of sustainable gardening.

The Ian Potter Foundation's grant of $5 million has helped the Royal Botanic Gardens leverage additional support for Stage 2 of the project, the most significant of which was a $20.9 milliion commitment from the Victorian Government.

Currently underway, the second stage will add another nine hectares to the Australian Garden and extend the amenities and services for visitors, tourists and the local community.

The twenty year documentation of this project means that researchers have access to important resources that may reflect whether the Potter Farmland Plan led to long-term policy-level influences and whether it will continue to in the current period of such environmental uncertainty.

The review has thrown up many more questions and areas for ongoing research than was first expected. The legacy left over the last twenty years, via the archive, farms, farmers and the community, places the Potter Farmland Plan in a unique position to reflect upon the changing environment and its effect on regional communities and farms. The Ian Potter Foundation continued its financial commitment to this review process in 2007-08.

In line with the Foundation's commitment to advancing knowledge, we continue to work with groups building on and learning from the experiences of the Potter Farmland Plan.